


the past tense of toast is toasted

by sesquidpedalian



Series: solanaceae [4]
Category: Dr. STONE (Anime)
Genre: Banter, Conversations, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mostly Fluff, Nostalgia, Platonic Relationships, Rated teen for swearing, there's nothing to tag because they're just talking and being friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24799699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sesquidpedalian/pseuds/sesquidpedalian
Summary: “Took you this long, huh?” Gen says, smiling despite himself.“I know. For a scientist, I’m super unobservant.” Senku leans back, stretches his arms out in front of himself with a groan.
Relationships: Asagiri Gen & Ishigami Senkuu
Series: solanaceae [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743325
Comments: 4
Kudos: 88





	the past tense of toast is toasted

**Author's Note:**

> title from this Welcome To Night Vale quote: "Listeners, listeners out there, listeners out in the vacant night clinging to my voice as a simulacrum of companionship, remember: fear is consciousness plus life. Regret is an attempt to avoid what has already happened. Toast is bread, held under direct heat until crisp. The present tense of regret is indecision. The future tense of fear is either comedy or tragedy. And the past tense of toast is toasted." (Episode 23 - Eternal Scouts)

They’re sitting by the lab twisting gold wires by hand when Senku doubles over with a startled noise.

“Senku dear?” Gen asks, alarmed. “Are you okay?”

The scientist’s shoulders are shaking, his forehead pressed against his hands, fingers still curled tight around the wires. It takes a few seconds for Gen to recognize the soft gasps as laughter.

“You know what I just remembered?” Senku straightens up, wipes at the corner of his eye. “ _Fuck_ , it’s so dumb.” 

“Uh...What did you remember, dear?”

“In my room, before, in the modern world, I had these two telescopes. One of them was the proper one that my dad sold our car to buy for me, and the other one I made myself when I was a little kid.”

Gen blinks a few times. “You made your own _telescope_?”

“It was crappy. Lenses I bought online plus some cardboard and wires. Couldn’t see a thing through it. I never used it, so all it was good for was collecting dust. My dad told me to keep it though, because he’s old and sentimental.” Senku goes back to twining gold, a faint smile on his face. “For years it sat on my shelf, totally useless. I hardly even looked at it. And I just realized I’m never gonna see it again.”

Senku’s eyes have gone bright, half-lidded. Gen has stopped working, but Senku doesn’t scold him for it.

“I guess I should say _was_. He _was_ old and sentimental.” Senku sets the wires down. “It took a crappy little telescope for me to properly realize. This isn’t a new world. It’s our modern world, three thousand seven hundred and nineteen years in the future. We missed all of it falling apart, but it happened and we won’t ever go back. We _can’t_ ever go back.” He’s laughing again.

“Took you this long, huh?” Gen says, smiling despite himself.

“I know. For a scientist, I’m super unobservant.” He leans back, stretches his arms out in front of himself with a groan.

“You know what made me realize?” Gen shifts into a more comfortable sitting position. “I woke up one morning tangled up in those scratchy blankets the villagers gave me and my first thought was, ‘wow, I gotta get my people to book a better hotel next time.’”

Senku gives a bitter bark of laughter. “Spoiled brat.”

“Look who’s talking!” Gen fires back, playing along easily.

“Hey, I might have been a brat, but I wasn’t _spoiled_.”

“Senku’s papa buys him a laboratory’s worth of equipment and dear Senku has the nerve to call that _not spoiled_?”

Senku ducks his head, shoulders shaking, and Gen has to look away too. He feels delirious, the many strands of gold in his hands blurring together. He puts them down, uncurls his stiff fingers.

The sunlight is dazzling, and the happy chatter of the villagers working is a distant tide of constant sound, and it’s Senku _,_ sitting there beside him, hunched over like the solid curve of his back will protect him from time’s peculiar brand of violence, so Gen lets the words fall out of him, almost careless. 

“I think I would have liked to perform for you, Senku dear. A proper performance, with a stage and lights and all my best costumes. And dinner afterwards. Fries from McDonald’s, or lobster, or maybe sushi from that place in Ikebukuro.”

Senku is listening silently, head cocked like a bored puppy.

“We could make sushi now, actually, couldn’t we? Not like there’s any shortage of fish, though I’m pretty sick of eating fish. You know I used to have a trick where I pulled fish out of hats? Because rabbits were too cliche, I guess. You would’ve figured out how I did it in seconds, but I’m sure I would have found at least one trick that would stump you.”

“Highly unlikely.” Senku is watching him through gently narrowed eyes.

“Don’t go underestimating me now, my dear.”

Senku scoffs but says nothing else, smiling down at the gold shining in his hands, twisted around his fingers like jewelry made of molten light.

Eventually, he mumbles, “I’d’ve liked to show you a proper telescope. The moons of Jupiter. The surface of Mars. I could’ve shown you my—my dad’s favourite constellations. Chrome too, he’d be amazed. Can you imagine?” 

“He’d probably yell ‘oh damn!!’ a couple hundred times before he actually got around to using it,” Gen says sardonically.

Senku laughs, loud and bright. “I’d pay just to watch you impersonate people for an hour. You should’ve done _that_ for your shows, not your dumb magic tricks.”

Gen makes an offended noise, for appearances’ sake.

“But really. Flashlights. Coffee. _Microwaves_. You know, it’s been nearly four thousand years since any human being has gotten up at two a.m. to make instant noodles in their microwave.” 

“Speaking from experience, dear?” Gen coos, leaning in close enough to make Senku smile wider. 

“Instant noodles taste best in the middle of the night; that’s just scientific fact.” The curl of Senku’s mouth is all mischief and the promise of mayhem. 

“Ah, I wouldn’t know. I always cooked mine using a stove during the day like a normal person.” Gen idly loops and unloops a strand of wire around his index finger. With false nonchalance, he continues, “But you’ve clearly never bought a bottle of cola from a 24-hour convenience store at exactly midnight and chugged half of it standing there in front of the cashier.” 

Senku snorts, which turns into laughter, which sets Gen laughing too.

“You did that? Mr. Fabulously Put-Together Travelling Celebrity?”

“It had been a _long_ day,” Gen sighs. “It really puts all of this into perspective.”

“You’re fucking ridiculous.” But Senku’s expression is relaxed, amused. His eyes practically glow in the late afternoon light, rubies, fire, roses.

They lapse into silence and half-hearted work. Scattered birdsong bursts from the trees at irregular intervals and Gen whistles a few notes to them. The heat of the sun, even this late in the day, turns his many-layered outfit into a cocoon of humidity and sweat. It’s not so bad.

He wonders if this is what safety feels like.

Then, Gen glances at Senku out of the corner of his eye, and catches him watching right back. A startled pause, and they dissolve into laughter again.

“We’re such idiots,” Gen manages to offer between gasps.

“You are.”

“Hey!”

“Okay, fine. We can be kind of dumb, sometimes.” Senku runs a hand through his hair, grinning helplessly at the wall of the lab. “Stupid...Saying ‘oh hey, all of civilization and modern tech has been wiped out’ _excites_ me, but _noodles_ make me feel like this?”

“I know what you mean,” Gen mutters, accidentally letting his voice go soft. “I remember...writing advice I got once.” He clears his throat as pompously as he can, rewarded by Senku snickering, before reciting, “‘When you want to write about the horrors of war, you don’t write about blood and guns and soldiers. You write about the tiny striped sock abandoned by the side of the road.’” Gen buries his face in his hands. “Fuck, I can’t believe he was right. I _hated_ that guy.”

“My telescope,” Senku starts. Stops. Breathes and tries again. “That crappy old telescope probably got wrecked in the first storm that came through. That morning, I...I think I left my window open.”

Senku nearly looks his own age for once. He makes no effort to keep shaping the wires in front of him.

“There’s this book I borrowed from a colleague of mine,” Gen says. “She might even have been a friend. She made me promise to give it back to her in a month. I’d just started reading it in my spare time when...Well. I guess I missed that deadline by a long shot, huh?”

Time eats a gaping hole into Gen’s chest. If he wasn’t sitting already, he might have staggered under the weight of it all.

“C’mon, mentalist, get back to work. You’re still my labourer,” Senku says, voice thick with emotion.

“You nasty little hypocrite,” Gen laughs, just as shaky. “You’re not working either. Are you going soft on me?”

A long silence. Gen feels Senku’s gaze on him, and looks up to blazing eyes, fierce and warm as a forest fire.

“We’re going to rebuild the modern world from the ground up. Every single thing. Every single person. Gen, we’re gonna do it all.”

Gen breathes, slow and deep. Feels the gold, warm in his hands, and the sun, glaring at his back. Braces himself, though he doesn't know for what, and says, “I’m with you all the way, Senku dear.”

Senku smiles sideways at Gen, a slash of teeth and a brilliance of his eyes. “Of course you are.” The mischief returns. “And then we’re going to make instant noodles in a proper microwave, and you’re gonna finally see what you've been missing out on.”


End file.
